It’s been a year since I published the first part of this topic here. Now it’s time for critical handmade online shop comparison. I am going to compare both shops which you can see underneath my page: www.etsy.com and dawanda.com where I have been selling my jewellery for 2 and 1 years respectively.
First some stats: 19 sales on etsy.com and 18 on dawanda.com. At a first glance, 1:2 ratio for dawanda. But it’s just a first impression. When I look critically, I notice that my revenue from etsy.com has been higher for the same amount of items. It means that the dawanda buyers are in general looking for cheaper items. There is nothing wrong about that. In my vision, my cheaper jewelry must have the same quality and the same beauty as more expensive jewelry. It’s just that it needs less material and less hours of work. Love, inspiration and creative ideas are exactly the same. But this price analysis tells you quite a lot about the market.
On the positive side: dawanda buyers may have smaller budgets, but they are much more interactive. I’ve got a lot of communication and a lot of positive feedback which I appreciate so much. Maybe because it’s a European based internet shop, and the communication goes much better with your geographical neighbors. Though I use Google Translate for translating my shop and listings, the basic knowledge of German and French is really a must if you want to advertise your jewellery for the German and French markets on dawanda.com. Otherwise you can’t communicate with the buyers in these countries. I am not sure whether it is useful to translate the shop into Dutch. Though I am based in the Netherlands, I have never sold an item on the Dutch market through these shops. And all the Dutch people speak English. I do translate my listings in Dutch, but it is more just for fun than for the necessity.
However, I noticed lately that my view stats on dawanda.com have the tendency to get rather slack on the daily basis and jump as soon as I post a new item. It could be a sign that I skimmed the dawanda market and reached a certain number of fans, who react every time a new item is posted. But somehow this circle does not grow. Dawanda shopping community is anyway much smaller than the etsy shopping community. The same is true for the competition: it’s much easier to stand out in a crowd here. On the down side, it also means that the community of jewelry artists is much smaller. This is what I love about etsy: the community, the teams, the whole spirit. Maybe I will have to be more active on dawanda forums?
On the cost side: etsy.com charges 3,5% sales commission, while dawanda.com charges 5%. But the listing and re-listing on dawanda.com is free, so they work more on ‘no cure no pay basis’.
These are just the first thoughts. I have not gone into detail analyzing SEO, traffic and technical facilities which both these sites offer. Maybe one day I will. To be continued (some time in the future).
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